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Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Most Underqualified VP Candidate in History

This editorial piece in the Times UK, written by Andrew Sullivan*. Certainly one of the best and most concise essays on why Sarah Palin is so horribly unqualified as a VP candidate.

I still find myself stunned, speechless, even, at the prospect that this woman could become President of the United States in less than six months. It is beyond astonshing. We know absolutely nothing about her, about her views, about her judgement, about her opinions on any number of crucial issues throughout the world. And yet she is treated as a celebrity candidate, like one of the ordinary yokels on American Idol.

Is this what ten years of reality television have wrought? Have we learned nothing from the ignorance and incompetance of George W. Bush? Remember that guy? Remember anything?

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*I've found myself reading Sullivan a lot in recent weeks. I remember him when he was the editor of The New Republic back in the 1990s, back when that rag was still respectable. I don't always agree with him much of the time, but he challenges me and he's honest. He is a Republican conservative who was willing to admit his error in judgement in following Bush, and he's been willing enough to challenge the GOP for the crimes of these past eight years. It's good to be surrounded by honest and smart people, regardless of their politics. We Americans used to believe in that sort of thing, before camping out in their respective tribal red-and-blue camps.